“The only time I ever saw him is when he would come outside to smoke a cigarette,” said Patricia Slate, who lives across the way from the rented mobile home where Robert Calvin Mark lived in the 600 block of Old Stewart Road.

Mark, 64, was charged Monday with one count of abuse of a corpse after investigators say he kept the body of Doris Ann Braithwaite on the floor of their home for several weeks, perhaps months, after her death, according to a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation news release.

Robert Calvin Mark(Photo: Contributed/TBI)

An autopsy is being conducted to determine how the 72-year-old Brathewaite died.

After not hearing from Brathewaite in a long time, her family contacted authorities requesting they check on her.

Houston County deputies found Braithwaite deceased. District Attorney General Ray Crouch directed the TBI to conduct an investigation into her death along with the Houston County Sheriff’s Office.

Another neighbor, Ricky Odom, said he also had not seen the woman, but occasionally he’d see Mark smoking on the porch.

“I’ve tried to be more observant because we’ve had a few thefts recently,” he said. “So, I look around at different times of the day, and at night when I might be up. I try to watch out for anything that doesn’t seem right.”

Odom said he hadn’t noticed anything unusual lately.

The owner of the small mobile home park declined comment, indicating investigators told him not to say anything.

A records check of Mark revealed a previous address in Nashville and another in Venice, California. He was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor assault in 2004, but otherwise his criminal record primarily indicated traffic offenses involving his driver’s license.

Mark Hicks can be reached at 931-212-7626 or on Twitter: @markhicksleaf. Stephanie Ingersoll contributed to this report.